hello all, well its my turn now so lets see if i can live up to andrews standards. As Andrew put at the start of our travels to Cambodia, getting here was a challenge in itself. We took 6 buses in total changing every 3 hours, so we could spend some more money in drivers restaurants. At one point we had 2 drivers, both in the drivers tiny seat. we have a great shot of this. Another bus/people carrier had 13 seats, but there were 18 of us including driver and of course he had to bring his friend, so they just put tiny pillows down in between seats for our comfort on the 3 hour journey. So just to paint the picture a little better, there were 16 passengers, 2 drivers, 16 backpacks, 14 rucksacks and a 3 hour journey on an incomplete road. We had to laugh. Watching the 100 cows in the road and the little naked children running about in the mud. When we finally arrived in Siem reap, you were met by about 50 - 60 tuk tuk drivers all shouting at you to get your attention, all before you got off the bus, it was like being famous. We stayed at a nice guest house just outside the city centre. On the 1st night we just looked around the city and had a couple of the local beers, Angkor. We had already decided to go to the temples early the next morning, and we wanted to ride there.

We hired some good moutain bikes for $3. We arrived at the 1st temple Angkor wat at about 9.30, it was already about 30"degrees. The temple was amazing, the whole area has been really well looked after, inside some work was being done as the rain water was damaging some of the stone. Angkor is so hard to explain its size, as you stand back and look at it from afar it does not look real. We were only doing the mini tour, but this was ok as we got to see all the main temples. One of my favourites was where they filmed tomb raider, as you get to see all the unusual trees growing out of the falling buildings. We spent until about 4pm at the temples, by this time it had been 38+ most of the day, but as we were making our way back home, still 12km away the heavens opened and cooled us both off. We were very wet, but glad of the rain. When we arrived home we realised that we had cycled over 27km. Again that evening, we had a well earned beer and some noodles. Our 3rd and final day in Siem reap, was spent updating our site, writing postcards and yes eating ice cream - lovely.

We had an early start on the 19th another 6 hour journey to the capital Phom penh. More bus fun for us, we got there early as requested, 7.30am to leave at 8, we finally left at 10.15am, we are getting used to always adding about 2 hours on to every journey. The journey was ok and we arrived at about 4pm. We booked into a guest house, but it was just not worth the money, so we moved, We decided as a treat we would book into a cheap hotel, so we could have a hot shower and aircon. I was really excited to find it had a bath, this took about 1 hour to fill as it only had a shower - but it was worth it.

The following day we hired ourseleves a tuk tuk driver for the whole day to take us around the capital. first stop was the Tuol sleng museum, where 1000s of people were held during 1972 and 1975, the museum was a very moving place with many horrific pictures and stories all over the cells. We stayed here until 12pm, we then moved on to the Choeung Ek (the killing fields ), this again was very moving, but really interesting to see. We did not spend long here as its not a place you want to spend alot of time. The tuk tuk then dropped us back and andrew had to go and again look for another guest house - in the rain, we ended up back where we started, but in a much better room. We have just applied for our visas, that we will be collecting tomorrow. We will be leaving Cambodia on the 23rd, just enough time to spend finding a place for the 4 of us in Ho chi minh. We will write again soon x